OrgAhead

A Simulation of Organizational Adaptation

OrgAhead is an organizational learning model designed to test different forms of organizations under a common task representation. Each member of the organization receives information from a subordinate or from the environment, makes a decision based on the information and what he or she has learned so far, and provides superiors with an answer to the decision. These decisions are either `yes/no' or `yes/maybe/no'; again, we're dealing with an intellective model.

Virtual experiments are run to address a variety of questions regarding organizational learning and performance including the following:

How do various constraints affect the performance of the organization? These constraints may include

size of the organization,

resources agents can manage at once, and

how much memory, or history, each agent can retain.

Do the structures of adaptive organizations (i.e. those that perform higher) radically differ from those that are maladaptive?